Magnetization reversal processes in amorphous and polycrystalline Co/sub x/Si/sub 1-x/ patterned nanowires

Summary form only given. The recent development of lithography techniques at submicrometric scales allows the fabrication of ordered magnetic structures with nanometric dimensions. These nanostructures can present novel properties as their sizes become comparable with the physical characteristic lengths of the material or the crystalline grain size. In particular, magnetization reversal processes can be controlled and strongly modified as the size is reduced at these small scales. In this work, arrays of long Co/sub x/Si/sub 1-x/ nanowires have been fabricated on Si substrates by electron beam lithography. As the Co content was reduced, the sample microstructure varied from polycrystalline to amorphous, without significantly modifying the saturation magnetization. The width (w) of the polycrystalline and amorphous nanowires was about 300 nm, and the center-to-center interwire distance of the array was kept larger than 2w, so that the dipole interactions between nanowires was negligible. The magnetic properties of the wire arrays was analyzed by the magneto-optical transverse Kerr effect, measuring both the component of the magnetization parallel to the applied field as well as the perpendicular one.